Duino Elegies, Deluxe Edition: The original English translation of Rilke's landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West - reissued for the first time in 90 years

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Vita Sackville-West (translator), Edward Sackville-West (translator)

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 2025

About the author

A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.

Reviews

[Merlynn James · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

I COULD write a very profound review for this but I choose “mommy issues wah wah”

[Mirjana (Mirjana_bere) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfektno gotsko vzušje, čutiš sapo, ki jo povzročajo (črna?) krila angelov, vidiš temne oblake in skalovje pod devinskim gradom 🖤🖤🖤

[Aaron White · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second time through the Elegies, roughly ten years after I first read them, and this time in the stunning original English translation by the Sackville-Wests. I will need to read them again. The imagery soars and penetrates. Rilke uses metaphor as all poets do, but he refuses to leave the metaphor until he has explored it to the absolute end. It is a work of utmost concentration and attention, true contemplation of the heart and spirit. He speaks of love, of his mother, of animals, of the heart, and he speaks to the angels in each part of the poem (there are ten elegies, and they seem inspired at least by the complex theological system of St Aquinas). I cannot say that I grasped it all, or maybe even most of it, but I can say it continues to capture and move me, creating for me imagery and phrasing to speak of inner realities I am only beginning to perceive.